The Hotel Carter...

Oh man, what a dump. A couple of friends and I stayed there a few years back, little suspecting how bad the well-located hellhole might be.

To start with, there was an old cranky man hanging out in the lobby, if I recall, he was yelling incomprehensibly at some point.

The lobby, such as it is, was carpeted with what seemed to be various discarded carpet samples - I seem to remember noticing that one repeated sample square had the old "The Athlete's Foot" logo on it.

Classy.

One night, upon returning from our explorations, my esteemed associate (whom I will refer to only as "The Baron" for the purposes of this story) was implored by one woman in a cheap fur coat (and little else) to bring him with her upstairs. Presumably she'd have loved him long enough time, but as an aficionado of more masculine attentions, he deferred.

Of course, one can't forget the rooms - cheap rugs tacked to the walls as some odd sort of decoration, old TV sets on ramshackle endtables, towel racks within inches of exposed lightbulbs, leading to some smoky situations if one's towel-rag were to be improperly positioned... what's not to love?

Hanging below the marquee sign at the main entrance is a smaller sign which pretty much sums up the Carter experience - "You Wanted in Time (sic) Square (is that like the TimeCube?) & Less".

That sounds pretty amazing, but it's basically a variation on the infinitely less expensive vacuum brewing method. Whether or not the bamboo whirlpool introduces $20,000 worth of flavor is for those more refined than I to discern... But you can get a Bodum vacuum brewer in the $100 ballpark, and there are any number of other fine vacuum options available, many of them even less expensive.